Does the HuffPo Sale Mean Obama Is Over?
Arianna Huffington is a brilliant businesswoman with an extraordinary sense of timing — first riding the feminist wave to write a best seller accusing Picasso of womanizing, then going conservative to marry a multi-millionaire Republican, and then switching to the liberal/progressive side and founding the most successful new media news and opinion site extant.
It’s also long been clear she is a political thinker with the depth and conviction of a nepticulid moth. Arianna is driven almost entirely by self-interest. Her lifestyle, if not her putative ideas, would make Ayn Rand proud. The principle motivation for her quixotic run for governor in California appeared to have been to be photographed next to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So what can we glean from the substantial sale of the Huffington Post, beside the obvious — that the HuffPo’s investors wanted to get their money out and that already economically shaky AOL seems to have overpaid? Well, there is more important news in this: To the consternation of the HuffPo faithful, the re-upped HuffPo on AOL is apparently going more centrist, concentrating on more popular fare (they’ve been going that way already) and abjuring the political. As Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post:
AOL Chairman Tim Armstrong said he thinks “Arianna has the same interest we do, which is serving consumers’ needs and going beyond the just straight political needs of people.” Huffington agreed, boasting that only 15 percent of her eponymous site’s traffic is for politics (that’s down from 50 percent a couple of years ago), and she emphasized that politics is just one of two dozen “sections,” including a new one devoted to covering divorces.
Good post, but I don’t get the swipe at Ayn Rand. Rational egoism (free markets and individual judgment)is not the same as narcissistic pandering to hard politicos of the right and left. Rand was principled. You may not like her principles, but she did not sway with the political winds.
What is troublesome about Huffington is not that she made good business decisions (more power to her) but that she loathes the wealthy and productive in our society and advocates policies that stifle economic creativity. The government takes more of my paycheck while she and her rich friends advocate higher taxes and more regulation. She doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Rand.
It’s not meant as a swipe at Ayn Rand. Ironie, mon vieux.
And besides…Ayn Rand wasn’t an unprincipled alien whore who married a queer for his money
Hey!
We don’t need such adolescent school-yard language at Pajamas Media.
Ooooo, somebody has a problem with plain speaking gutter talk that is full of truth, ooooo.
Facts are facts. How else would you sugarcoat them?
Equating Rand to Huffington is certainly no compliment to the former. Besides, your comment is factually incorrect, nothing about someone this unprincipled would make Rand proud. That is not irony, that is just missing Rand by a parsec.
I think I understood the point you were trying to make Mr. Simon. Arianna Huffington is all about self interest and Ms. Rand believed self interest was good.
Enlightened rational self-interest, as diametrically opposed to the leftist selfishness ideal Huffington evidently espouses.
Rational self-interest is not the same thing as selling a website dedicated to leftist political propaganda (as a service). Actually, I’m wondering if AOL didn’t get the money from Soros or Obama to make the purchase. This association of AOL with Huff will fizzle and die. The victim, the carcass left in the dust, will be AOL.
Roger. Comparing those two is like comparing a good doctor with a drug pusher.
While Ayn Rand applied moral guidances to heal a morally sick society, Ariana is making money while binging on social pathologies she helps to enchance and entrench their existence in our life.
Obama, on the other side is like Ebola virus; He is destroying America’s organism with similar ferocity.
Needless to say, he must be fought and conquered in the same way Ebola is.
And that cannot, unfortunately, be done without the GEN. PINOCHET OPTION applied.
This option would be still effective today.
Tomorrow it shall only be the GEN. FRANCO OPTION left.
“She doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Rand.”
I think that was meant as a joke.
Arianna only loathes the wealthy and productive if they don’t invite her on their yacht, the bigger the better. Remember where she was when the crisis over “clinging to guns and religion” broke. On a 350 foot yacht in Tahiti.
Sharp observation, and I agree about Arianna: she always knows which way the wind is blowing.
Olbermann moving to Siberia—um, I mean Current TV (which has 23K nighttime viewers)—underscores the prognosis for “progressive” “commentary”: grim.
By the way, I also expect the eclipsing of Beck and other blowhards on the (nominal) right.
Gallup reports that Americans are deeply upset about the “moral climate” of the country.
To go along with our new Eisenhoweresque foreign policy “realism,” I anticipate a much more buttoned-down environment all around here at home.
I wonder how the shareholders feel about this move.
What I read is that AOL’s stock value went down by the amount they paid for HuffPo.
So Arianna Huffpo is no better than Arlen Spector… and look where that got him…
Sorry to tell you, but Arianna Huffington is much shrewder than Arlen Spector – and, alas, more powerful.
Arianna has proven to be much more nimble than Arlen. Every time Specter jumped it was to save what he had. She took something with her every time moved on and up to bigger and better things.
Like the Titanic, women and children first. The Dem Party will continue to rearrange the deck chairs.
My favorite is that Arianna got bloggers to write for her site for years, long after it was successful, and *didn’t pay them a dime*. Now she sells the thing for $300 million, and she and her investors visit the bank…while those bloggers presumably tell each other that they were furthering the cause of progressivism, and therefore money doesn’t matter. Typical limousine liberal, making and spending way more money than the rest of us will ever see, but telling the rest of us that their affluence shouldn’t be something we envy. We especially shouldn’t try and make any money off of them, no. Wealth is evil…except for yourself.
It was down to 15% politics already? So it is now going to take on a new “Sheen” under AOL management?
The “Internet Oprah” wants to do daytime megabyte soap opera? Soft leftism, soft porn, soft news, soft sell?
The Puffington Host? (PuffHo?)
I think United Online is looking better and better every day.
Wow. You guys are so solemn and protective of RAnd, whom I admire and generally agree with btw. You’re turning her into a religion, distinctly un-Randian approach. Lighten up. I was having fun.
Seeing as Rand is systematically smeared as an advocate of Nietzschean social Darwinism, you can see where your joke would draw such a response.
Incidentally, those who advocate Rand’s ideas are systematically smeared as quasi-religious cultists (we are so… uncompromising). So…
You are on a roll! (This, by the way, is tongue in cheek. Mostly.)
Regardless of what they were in their beginnings, Progressivism and the Left are now just tools of the “elite” to maintain their status.
Since they can’t entrench themselves as a hereditary aristocracy, their strategy is to undermine everyone who might compete with them, and collect rent.
“Progressivism, which was riding the crest of popularity on the election of Obama, is over.”
I hope so.
Progressivism is far from “over”. They are very, very deeply in control of our entire educational system. All networks except for Fox is full of them. The judiciary is full of them, Judge Vinson types notwithstanding. A great many people are on the public dole and will fight to keep their “benefits.”
Progs are like Islamists. It is holy war to them, and they are in in for the long haul. Read David Horowitz’s “Radical Son” for a good understanding of their long-term mindset.
Don’t count them out, and don’t stop organizing and fighting them. The price of freedom is eternal vigilence
Progressivism is indeed becoming a lost cause, The Tea Party and independents recognize that it is an Orwellian euphemism for “regressivism” – a return to serfdom – and that Obama is its prophet.
As for Arianna, the irony of your Ayn Rand reference is obvious: She’s the poster girl for ruthless self-centered capitalism with a tip of the hat to the interest of the common folk.
Nice piece.
Ditto on the meaning of progressivism. I would add that the ‘liberalism’ practiced by so-called liberals is il-liberalism.
BTW Roger – Good column.
You’re turning [Rand] into a religion
Way back in my college days (and I mean WAY back) I attended a seminar on Objectivism. Even though there was much in the material I agreed with, I was repelled by the “religiosity” of the seminar facilitator. True Randites quoted from Atlas Shrugged in the same manner that Fundamentalist Evangelicals quoted from their scripture. The contrast between professed rationality and observed doctrinaire discipline was striking.
That was exactly my experience in college as well. The “Objectivists” where quite literally proselytizers. They prowled the quad like missionaries. I talked to them a few times, and they definitely had the old-time religion. Mostly, they seemed to have used “rational self-interest” as a way to rationalize egotism and a do-whatever’s-your-bag ethic that never sounded all that different than the neo-hippies (I add the prefix because I’m too young for the original hippies).
Maybe my experience wasn’t representative, but I also have a relative who is a true believer, and the characterization I made above definitely holds true for him, too.
Whatever Rand’s literary and philosophical merits, her acolytes creep me out.
Quite right about the cult-like wackiness of some Rand-ites. In fact, it reminds me of the Ron Paul folks–I like a lot of what Paul has to say, but some of his followers are downright spooky–Hmmm…did he name his son after Ayn? I wonder?
Ayn, I serve the Lord Jesus… I know the Lord Jesus… Jesus is a friend of mine. Ayn, you’re no Lord Jesus.
And though your book was enlightening to me in college, you hold not a candle to Scripture. Indeed, your hoped-for economics could exist only in a humanity guided and moderated first by Scripture.
I doubt that Arianna Huffington accepted payment in stock. Cash on the barrelhead. No ditz, she.
No, it means Arianna is one of the weaselist opportunists of our time. At least as good as President 42.
She married an heir to a big fortune knowing he’s gay. She was a “conservative” when her Republican husband ran for Congress. She became a leftist and found the HuffPost to cash in on anti-Bush sentiments. Now she cashes in. Kudos to her.
‘Tis true. Arianna has squeezed the last drop of juice from that rotten, old mellon.
Take it from a Greek, Ariamba (a mix of Arianna and Obama) is a Greek with a heavy Greek unsophisticated accent, transplanted in America without any real understanding of the deep American roots or traditions, including business and politics. In Greek we refer to people like Ariamba as either a businesswoman “tou kolou” (meaning, “pseudo-businesswoman” more like a thief) and a “malakiasmeni” (a female derivative of “malakas” which, in its kind version, is translated as “jerk.”)
I don’t know Greek, but you can help me here.
What’s the Greek word for “courtesan”? It seems like the most appropriate term here.
etaíra
I don’t know what the modern Greek term is, but in classical antiquity it was hetaera: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetaera; cf. Aspasia of Miletus, Pericles’ lover.
She wished; she doesn’t rise to the level of Aspasia – not even close.
Porni.
LOL…yep…
Just as the other pathetic Greek “malakas”, Markos Moulitsas of the DailyKos, she’s considered to be an embarrassment to Greek-Americans.
“Markos Moulitsas” is Greek for “Malarkey”.
Some of the roughest Anglo-Saxon terminology, which I can just barely restrain myself from using here, would perhaps be even more accurate.
capitalism..granted a bit preverted…but…non the less
Arianna always has been a media whore, out for money. I remember in the 90′s she was posing as a conservative, running an impeach Clinton website. I never did trust her, even when she was claiming to be a conservative, and many of her professed views agreed with mine.
It is a mark of how incredibly stupid most leftists are that they actually considered her to be one of them. She only has one value, money and power, and will asssume any pose to gain them. Of course, now that I think of it, that is the real value for many leftists, so it makes it less surprising that she was able to take them in so easily.
Ironies aside, Rand and objectivism are pretty soulless ‘objects’ in sum. Strip the spirit and true creativity, which can’t really exist without some reference to either a higher power or just the mysteries of life, and turn everything into a worship of self based on ‘capitalism’ and some hyped view of individualism. Seems like another variant on Gestalt, TA, and all the ‘growth’ movements of that time. Okay, so let’s so I agree to ‘kill’ G-d with presumption, as the Randians do. Little is left after that. I remember watching Yaron Brook, an Israeli-American and leading Randian philosopher, explain how all aspects of American foreign policy need be based on ‘objectivist’ thinking. Gave me chills, personally.
Larry, sir, it seems to me that the trouble is, even if we grant the premise of your argument, it requires the existence of God — about which there has never been any objective proof. There is faith, which is a different animal. So we have belief in a set of principles (religion and god) which give meaning and morality to human life — but those principles can just as easily be believed in and used as a foundation without god, via a Golden Rule-based humanism.
It has always struck me as very dangerous to base human morality on something that has never — can never? — been proven to take any active interest in human activity.
But we stray far afield from the topic here, my apologies.
First, I don’t see how any of the posters above could’ve miscontrued Simon’s comparison of Arianna Huffington to Ayn Rand as literal. It was plainly a satirical and playful reference. Let’s not descend to the reading comprehension level of the typical Redstate commenter, people.
As for Simon’s contention that Huffpo’s sale to AOL is a sign of troubled times ahead for progressivism: if only this were true! But– alas!– when a political blog started-up with a meagre investment (I cannot remember the exact amount, but it wasn’t much) sells for over 300 million, that is emphatically not a bad omen for the brand of politics it espouses. If a major holding company bought the New Criterion or Pajamas Media for a hundred million dollars, who here wouldn’t jump for joy?
Thanks for this perceptive post, which doubtless incorporates insights from your Hollywood experience. Your remarks are a welcome corrective to the hyperventilation by many on the Right.
Mr. Simon:
“Arianna Huffington is a brilliant businesswoman with an extraordinary sense of timing — first riding the feminist wave to write a best seller accusing Picasso of womanizing, then going conservative to marry a multi-millionaire Republican, and then switching to the liberal/progressive side and founding the most successful new media news and opinion site extant.”
Yes, quite. At the risk of being considered vulgar, ( I know…MOI? Vulgar?), I would just observe that most succesful camp followers usually have pretty good instincts about which is the winning army to follow.
Such has been a way of life in Ever-so-enlightened Continental Europe for hundreds and hundreds and years.
Mr. Simon, your take on Huffington’s move to AOL — regarding motive and ramification — is music to my ears (metaphorically speaking, for the hyper-literate among your audience).
If it does, indeed, herald a decline in progressive influence in U.S. governance, then bully, I say. Sure, Arianna will take her “let my contributors eat cake” mentality to her new gig.
But no one forces her “citizen journalists” to supply content for free (or nearly for free). My supposition is that, for many of them, the possibility of getting noticed — and of potentially going on to bigger and better things — entices.
For others, simply writing for a larger audience than posting to their personal blogs permits is (probably) powerful incentive. (I, on the other hand, am satisfied with the small, deeply disturbed following that frequents my bereapundit, emmeffemm, and mike-murray sites.)
Bottom line: while I’m no fan of Huffington’s expedient approach to things political, I celebrate her turn away from the liberal left — enthusiastically so, if it coincides with a mass exodus on the part of the electorate.
I’ve enjoyed your writing and videos in the past but your comment about Ayn Rand and Ms. Huffington indicates a total lack of understanding of Ayn Rand’s ideas on your part. Very disappointing.
Maybe she’ the canary in the coal mine for liberals. The canary just died and she’s getting out of the coal mine as fast as possible. Well, this could potentially be great news for conservatives in 2012. Let’s just hope we don’t mess it up and nominate another RINO like John McCain. We all saw how well THAT turned out. Who knows, with the way the political winds are blowing in this country and with all the Tea Party activity, maybe Huffington will start a conservative web site or, better yet, make AOL lean conservative. But remember, Arianna, hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned!
I wonder what comes next for Arianna and her millions. Buying up nickels?
Sharp, bright commentary, Roger. Nobody does it better. If she were an investor she’d be considered the smart money that sells just before the top when dumb money piles in only to be hammered by the inevitable crash that follows.
Not sure I agree that this might work. Still thinking AOL is dumb money. But time will tell.
Now about those nepticulid moths…
Too late. I already gave up AOL, the day I heard about this merger, and asked them to erase my email accounts.
Arianna “Carpet Baggage” Huffington wraps up another con, coining money while AOL continues their clueless sleepwalk through the Internet, and all those Huffpo volunteer content providers get what they asked for-nothing.
Relax, folks. We can take small consolation that all her millions won’t ever rid her (or Arnold) of that accent. It’s
too late, baby!
AOL paid 300 million in cash – not stock or some other instrument, for a web site. Cold, hard, unfinanced, money in the bank making interest – Cash. Half of AOL’s cash was used to buy a website where 80% of the content is made by uncompensated bloggers, 10% by celebrity press agents who are posting things but their clients names and the remaining 10% is links to Drudge.
I dont fault Huffington for selling at that price because it would be totally irresponsible not to sell at 10 Times EBITA, but I do have to wonder what the hell is wrong with the board of directors at AOL. What person over the age of 15 would consider buying at this price? with half of their available ‘cash on hand’?
It is not just dumb, its Pets.com dumb. Its TheGlobe.com dumb.
Its like that great joke about Socrates’ last words ( Punch line: I drank WHAT?!”) I half expected the CEO of AOL to come back the next day and say “I BOUGHT WHAT?”
Gotta give a shout out to this comment. Three hundred million for a web site? That was an offer Arianna couldn’t refuse. Internet “progressivism” may well have peaked — hey, I’d like to think so too — but taking that kind of money was a no-brainer even if it hasn’t.
I would love to think that progressivism is over, but I wouldn’t count it out just yet. It continues to creep through our culture, colleges, schools, and government agencies.
HuffPo was just an entrepreneurial venture run by a female hustler who took advantage of a market opportunity. The joke’s on its loyal fans and contributors who fell for the big progressive huff and puff. They never caught on to the con.
Well I thought your employment of the Ayn Rand simile was acceptable but what the heck did nepticulid moths ever do to you? Really!
Atlas Shrugged is a good description of what AH has done. AOL Mugged is another.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/aol_stock_sheds_huffpo_price_tag_el1sFNDBYfHoytknIKnOJL
NYPost points out that AOL stock has gone down by the amount they agreed to pay for Arianna’s Baby.
How funny! The Greek opportunist twit simply missed in her timing and calculations when playing the conservative….with the majority of conservatives tuned out and sound asleep. So, as the natural opportunist, she humped over to the playground of the noisy “progresives” Bush and war bashing. Now that the “conservatives” have awakened somewhat, in numbers that far eclipse the socialists she is repositioning…to a position where she can play both ends from the middle…a prostitute analogy somewhere in the latter, I’m sure.
She’s a conduit of AOL money to Obama; it’s called “money laundering.” All that “Arianna-headed AOL-HP moving to the center” is just smoke and mirrors. Her name should have been “Ariadne of the labyrinth myth.”
To claim that the traffic at Huffington Post is only 15% political is absurd. Today’s front page contains articles featuring Obama, McCain, Rumsfeld, Palin (Sarah and Bristol in separate articles), Kerry, Gore, Olbermann, Bachman, Chris Lee, Giffords, Emanuel, Fred Upton, and much more.
The hypocrisy of the left is amazing. Just the thought of AH despising the wealthy. How can she look at herself in the mirror. Of course, she’s such a hag, how CAN she look at herself in the mirror. She’s gonna get paid,what, $15 mil? Maybe in her warped sense, that’s not wealthy.
Over time, I have come to the conclusion that AOL is just another arm of the left wing so even with the alleged ‘only 15% OF HufPo being about politics’ this will swing up and become as vicious as some of the other left/commie sites. Personally, I hope this turns out to be a bigger disaster than the Timewarner/AOL merger.
interesting take. I just assumed that the sale was some sort of money laundering payback to the investors who set up a site to spread progressive propaganda on the internet. Or maybe to pay for all those busses she needed to send the “grassroots” protesters that were organized for the big rally.
Have to laugh at the unpaid suckers who provided the free content. Hit in the head with a clueX4. heh.
Arianna has always been striving for two things — money for Arianna and political power for Arianna. She married Michael forvthe former and tried to turn him into a major player in Republican politics in the 1992-94 election cycle because she saw herself as the Republican version of Hillary Clinton.
The problem was that evem during the 1994 Senate campaign against Diane Feinstein, Arianna ticked off California conservatives because of her attitude. After the GOP takeover of Congress despite her husband’s loss, she glommed onto Newt Gingrich, and became a conservative TV talking head for about four years … until it became clear that nationally people were as unwilling to annoit Huffington as Queen Of The Conservatives as those in California were.
That’s when she started moving to the left, and found that suckering Hollywood types like Warren Beatty into thinking she was some sort of deep political thinker was easier than trying to pull the same stunt on conservatives. She moved left at the same time as the voters were, if not moving far to the right, at least changing parties in the White House in the 2000 election. So it wasn’t so much Arianna reading the tea leaves and being ahead of the game — her comically bad campaign for California governor in the ’03 recall shows she didn’t have Clue One where even the liberal electorate of California was going — but she found that it was far easier to throw out some banal talking points and invective against certain key politicians and media people when you’re preaching to the left and have them not just believe it, but willingly follow you anywhere.
Huffington found her suckers, played them for half a decade of free content that increased the equity of her website in the eyes of other liberals, including, apparently, the suits running AOL who approved this deal. The problem is when you run a website that inveighs against the evils of big corporations and then you sell out to the least-hip big corporation on the Internet, there’s no guarantee all those unpaid, non-contract content providers are going to keep following you. We’ll just have to see if a few well placed remarks against Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh or some other bete noir of the left by Airanna over the next few days will keep her minions in line and providing protect for $0 a year.
Nepticulid moths sound more like fleas than moths to me.
Particularly astute and prescient post by Roger L. Simon.
If ever there were a canary in a mine shaft, it would be Arianna.
Roger, I so hope you are right. Arianna is a sell out. Obama is not a money maker for people. Rand would laugh and say she isn’t surprised how gullible the masses can be. Maybe this country can wake up.
Mayhill Fowler, who reported Obama’s comment about “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion”, comments here from a non-conservative point of view.
HEPZELBA
Glen Beck tells the truth and backs it up with proof. You
want that kind of voice to be silenced. Sir, you are a fool.
I tend to agree with you. Glen Beck may not always be right, but I find his discussions of associations between various organizations, communists groups, socialists, leftists, etc. very fascinating. And yes he does produce documentation or quotes to back himself up. It’s sort of like why all rich people know each other and are interconnected in one way or another. Those who don’t agree with Beck should just turn him off and watch something else.
So what does this alien get from
Out with the health care crisis, in with divorce and Lindsay Lohan. Forget the puffery about “citizen journalism” coming to AOL.
that the American voter can only handle the real world in terms of reality shows?
Roger, for the sake of everyone: I hope you are right.
The Wealth of nations is derived from production and production comes from mines, and farms, and factories. and that is where the jobs will be found.
Just the opposite. Young people in this country are overwhelmingly turning away from television news and talk radio in favor of internet and new media. And there’s tons and tons of money to made both in these industries and from these demographics. So, yes, there are some tea leaves to be read here, but you’re reading them wrong. Conservatives should be frightened by the fact that advertisers are abandoning Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck in droves while simultansously buying up lucrative progressive online news outlets. It won’t be long before Murdoch follows suit and starts pandering to the iPad, hip-hop generation, because that’s where the money is.
No, you’re wrong. This is just the beginning for liberalism–as conservatives learn how autocratic there leader are.
This article shows the connection between the market place for ideas and the general market – it’s all just one big market linked together through the medium of exchange.
When an ideology entails the general destruction of values, then the demand for that philosophy will naturally fall relative to a pro-value philosophy. In short, there is no profit in being stupid.
The Invisible Hand is reaching to cover the mouth of nihilists.
i wish.
Progressives NEVER go away. She will reappear in a different way. Soros taught her well. They are getting out of the way to get on with something else. Watch and see. It does expose the lie for what it is. They espouse one ideology and excel in another.